


Look Me In The Eye

by DoreyG



Series: Do or Die [2]
Category: Frey & McGray Series - Oscar de Muriel
Genre: Arguing, Awkward Post Hook-Up Conversations, Book 5, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27300760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: “Ye really meant to abandon me?”He had never heard McGray insecure before, but he was hearing it now. He hesitated for a long moment, and then decided that there was no point in being needlessly kind to a man who could take as much punishment as he chose to give. “Yes.”“Even after everything we did together?” McGray asked, a downright raw note to his voice now. He stared across at McGray in steadily dawning horror, as it struck him that he wouldn’t be able to dance around the awkward edges of this conversation and escape intact, and that only seemed to make him more mad. “Even after I fucked ye until ye sobbed in my arms?”
Relationships: Ian Frey/Adolphus "Nine Nails" McGray
Series: Do or Die [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2027680
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Look Me In The Eye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



> You might want to read this after Delusion is Haunting /Your totally anonymous author

The carriage ride from Maurice’s - now his, and didn’t that knowledge sit queasy in his stomach - estate was even more awkward than he’d expected, and that was saying something. McGray alternately stared at the piece of paper in his hand, and out of the window in his most intense and brooding way. He tried his very hardest to stare out of the window himself, and to not so much as glance at McGray sitting across from him.

It didn’t work very well. By the time that McGray finally looked in his direction, he knew the exact cut of the execrable Tartan suit he wore and the rather distractingly tight way it sat on his shoulders “...So.”

He had gone to great lengths to avoid this conversation, lengths that included - but were not limited to - fucking off to another country entirely. As such it took a few moments of girding his loins, which was not at _all_ the appropriate term to use he realised with a sickly lurch a moment later, before he could bring himself to respond in kind. “So?”

In other situations, involving other people, McGray could’ve probably brought himself to be kind. But this wasn’t another situation, and he was the only other person in the carriage. McGray leant forward, bringing their faces far too close together. “Ye really weren’t intending to come back, then?”

He forced himself to meet McGray’s eyes, even as he was subtly trying to retreat backwards through the seat of the carriage and possibly into the world outside. “No. As I have already said, no I was not.”

“Ye really meant to abandon yer entire job? Yer entire life, that ye’ve pursued with a frankly weird intensity for the past however many years?” McGray pressed, but while his expression was one of a rather ugly bloodhound who had just caught a scent there was a decidedly hurt look in his eyes that he couldn’t bring himself to regard too closely. “Ye really meant to abandon me?”

He had never heard McGray insecure before, but he was hearing it now. He hesitated for a long moment, and then decided that there was no point in being needlessly kind to a man who could take as much punishment as he chose to give. “Yes.”

“Even after everything we did together?” McGray asked, a downright raw note to his voice now. He stared across at McGray in steadily dawning horror, as it struck him that he wouldn’t be able to dance around the awkward edges of this conversation and escape intact, and that only seemed to make him more mad. “Even after I fucked ye until ye sobbed in my arms?”

He glanced around the carriage in automatic horror, but they remained the only two in there to hear and the conveyance looked sturdy enough that not a word of this humiliating affair would slip out to the driver. Despite this, the knowledge that everything between them would remain secret, he firmly considered just tugging open the carriage door and throwing himself out. Even having his body be broken by a bad fall seemed better than tolerating _this_.

McGray obviously saw at least part of that on his face, and despair seemed to settle over him. He tried his very hardest not to pay too much attention to that, lest he started to feel guilty. “Lassie-”

That was too much, made even worse by the instinctive arousal that stirred in him at such a simple word. “Don’t call me that.”

McGray took a sharp breath in, and it was like a mask came down over his expression. He had seen him angry many times before, but he had rarely glimpsed that almost dead light in his eyes. “Ye liked me calling ye it when we spent the night together, when I was inside ye.”

Oh, _God_. He felt his cheeks heat, knew that he’d probably gone bright red in the most distressing of ways. “That was an entirely unique situation!”

“Was it?” McGray asked, low and lethal. And if he hadn’t known better, he barely knew better as it was truth be told, he would’ve thought that he was genuinely about five seconds away from pulling out his gun and putting an end to the problem then and there. “I wrote ye letters, y'ken. When ye fucked off to yer hoity toity mansion without a word.”

He blinked, started forward a little in his seat before he remembered himself and brutally leant back before he could go a single inch closer to McGray’s body. “You didn’t actually say anything?”

“I’m not stupid, lass,” McGray said, with an ugly twist of his mouth that implied that he knew exactly how highly he rated his intelligence. Which wasn’t true, because despite everything - despite all the things that he said, as often as he could while in McGray’s presence - he knew that McGray was probably the smartest man that he’d ever met. “I just wanted to know when ye’d be coming back, when ye’d be joining me again. When things could get back to normal.”

In some ways, it almost would’ve felt better to learn that McGray had written an intimate account of their night together and sent it off for the world to see. He deliberately wormed his way back against his seat again, took in deep breath after deep breath through his mouth in a vain attempt to ground himself.

McGray held his gaze for a moment, seeing his discomposure. And then dropped his eyes suddenly to his hands, presumably to hide his own expression. “I genuinely didn’t think that ye’d just _leave_.”

“I don’t know why you assumed that I’d do anything else,” he said, and heard his voice sound tight and a great deal higher pitched than he’d like across the carriage. And suddenly he was genuinely furious at that, at the thought that McGray could unman him so easily again and again and _again_. “You want the truth, Nine Nails? Yes, I meant to abandon you. Yes, I meant to sleep with you, forget myself for just a few minutes and then depart for England without a backwards glance. Yes, I intended never to think of you again after our shameful interlude together. Yes, I knew that was my intention even before I set foot in your bedroom. Yes!”

McGray’s eyes shot up to him for a long moment, horribly raw yet again. And then his entire face hardened deliberately, became something remarkably ugly in its pain. “I knew ye were a low down rat, lass, but this takes the fucking cake.”

“What do you want from me, Nine Nails?” He asked, his voice a furious and uncontrolled hiss. “We both agreed that it’d mean nothing. You can’t deny that.”

“Aye, we did,” McGray said, and his voice was just as ugly as his face. No time to regret that, not when he was already only holding onto his dignity by a thread. “But maybe I wouldn’t have made that agreement if I’d had all the facts, y’see. Because when ye said it’d mean nothing I thought, fool that I was, that ye’d come back to Edinburgh with me and continue to be my friend. Not that ye’d fuck off to Gloustershire without a backwards glance, and treat me like dirt in the process.”

“Friend?” He practically spat, genuinely confused and all the more angry because of that confusion. “Have you gone absolutely and completely mad in the time that I’ve been gone? We’re not friends, Nine Nails.”

McGray’s eyes narrowed, he looked decidedly unimpressed. He told himself that it didn’t hurt, that McGray’s approval had never mattered in the first place. “Then what else are we?”

“We’re-” He should’ve had a thousand answers to that, a thousand answers firmly capable of putting McGray in his place for once and for all, but once the first word left his tongue he found that he couldn’t actually remember any of them. He sat awkwardly in the carriage, glaring at McGray across from him like it was his fault.

“Yer the only person I can actually talk to in Edinburgh, apart from Katerina. The only one I actually spend any time with outside of work, despite the fact that I see yer miserable face all the time anyway. The only one I’d actually trust to have my back, no matter how bad the situation,” McGray said, surprisingly levelly considering that he was deliberately flaying the both of them with his words. “And ye have nobody else other than me either, don’t fucking lie. I’m the only one ye actually spend time with, the only one ye actually share anything with, the only one ye’ve ever let see more than a small part of yerself.” 

All of that was true, and he hated it more than he’d ever hated anything else before. He found himself glaring at McGray, desperately wanting to defend himself and yet not quite knowing how to. “I have plenty of people.”

“And yet I was the only one ye could crawl to for some comfort when ye were at yer very lowest.” McGray arched an unimpressed eyebrow, and he hated that too. Sometimes he thought that he’d never felt passionately about anything until McGray had waltzed into his life, and he desperately wished that they’d never met so he’d never had to discover what emotions actually felt like. “And yet I’m the only person ye’ve ever trusted enough to sleep with. Fancy that.”

“What is this about, Nine Nails?” He demanded, his voice shaking with anger. He hated being this vulnerable, hated having all of his soft bits pulled out of the darkness and examined mercilessly underneath the light. “It can’t be about the loss of a friendship, even one that you apparently thought was the most promising thing in the world. What, did you cherish hopes of me or something?”

It was genuinely only after he’d said it that he remembered the flash of pure want in McGray’s eyes just before he’d managed to convince him, but by then it was too late. McGray’s face went briefly pale, and then formed immediately back into that terrifying mask of anger. “I thought ye said that we wouldn’t make anything of it, that we wouldn’t mock each other.”

“I thought a lot of things too,” he said quietly, feeling bad despite himself. “And yet here we are, mutually screwing each other over yet again.”

McGray had gone back to staring at him like he loathed him, any and all sadness transformed easily into boiling rage. It should’ve probably made things a bit easier, it certainly shouldn’t have made him feel quite so sad. “Ye really are a thoroughgoing bastard, ain’t cha?”

It hurt, obscurely, but he refused to allow McGray to see quite how deep the insult had bitten. He scowled fiercely instead. “Takes one to know one.”

They glared at each other from a near distance for a long few moments, both obviously hurting and neither willing to let it show. A part of him wondered how they had got here, when they had been so vulnerable in each other’s arms just a few weeks before, but he dismissed it. This was for the best. This had to be for the best.

“Look,” he said eventually, and tried to pretend that he was extending an olive branch instead of lashing out with vicious force because he had been hurt yet again. “There’s really no point in making it into anything other than it was. We’re just going to end up hurting each other, if we do.”

McGray bore the olive branch, the lashing out, as well as he ever did. But his eyes remained wary, closed off in a way that they hadn’t been since the very early days of their acquaintance. “And what was it?”

“One desperate man taking refuge in another after the worst day of his life, against his better judgement,” he said. He tried to make his tone light and flippant, he was well aware that he failed absolutely. “It wasn’t a statement of friendship, it wasn’t the beginning of a relationship, it wasn’t even particularly a show of trust. It was just comfort sought and comfort given, nothing more and nothing less.”

McGray regarded him with flat eyes for a long few moments. His expression of ugly rage had slowly faded to one of intense thought, but he wasn’t fool enough to relax at the sight of it.

“I’m not even sure why you’d want anything else,” he said, still attempting lightness, and very deliberately refused to reflect on how that could quite easily sound like a plea in another situation. “Think of it, Nine Nails, a relationship couldn’t possibly work between us. For one thing, we’re both men.”

“Ye really are sheltered, ain’t cha?” McGray stated, didn’t question. That worryingly thoughtful expression still remained, unsettling in its intensity. He had known McGray for long enough now, had paid close enough attention to him over the years, to know that his mind being in motion was rarely a good thing. “Plenty of men manage to maintain relationships with each other, they’re just private about it. It’s not as big a thing as ye think.”

“That’s just one of the reasons,” he said levelly, although a part of him reeled at the thought of other men - men who were probably like him in some ways - being happy with each other. Another thing to be shoved down into the iron vault of his mind, and never examined ever again. “We’re incredibly different as people, I’m a London Dandy while you’re a Scottish slob. We never get on, we fight all the time. We work together, in a profession where moral impeccability is a huge part of the job. Neither of us are exactly good people, in our own special ways. We’d just make each other miserable, over and over again.”

McGray went back to staring at him, silent and thoughtful. It felt like an itch under his skin, one he wanted to scratch until they both bled.

“There’s no chance, Nine Nails, and that’s probably for the best,” he said, attempting to sound wise and sage instead of like he wanted to tear his own hair out rather than tolerate a second more of this horrible conversation. “It’s over between us, it was over before it even began. And now all we can do is try to forget.”

They stared at each other for a long moment more, both tense and silent… And then, in one of the most worrying shifts that he’d ever witnessed in his entire life, McGray very slowly started to smile. “Ye really believe that?”

It was deeply unsettling, especially since he’d rarely seen McGray smile before even when they weren’t having one of the most humiliating conversations of his life. He watched the man uncertainly for a long few moments, and then attempted to draw himself up with all the dignity he could muster. “Yes.”

McGray’s unsettling grin only grew, like he _knew_ what it was doing to him. “Really, Lassie?”

“Yes!” He snapped, set on the back foot once again. He didn’t know how McGray managed to unsettle him so easily, to make him uncertain and wilting over and over again, but he rather wished that he’d _stop_ for once and for all. “Honestly, Nine Nails, I don’t know what you’re getting at but I’d really rather you-”

McGray reached out, in one incredibly smooth movement, and seized him around the upper arms. He only had time to blink, startled at being manhandled in such a way even after the intensity of their conversation, before McGray was dragging him in and right up onto his broad lap.

“Nine Nails,” he gasped when he was there, and braced his hands against McGray’s chest. He remembered being in exactly this position just a few weeks before, except with far fewer clothes between them, and the thought was terrifyingly disorientating. “What-?”

He didn’t have time to finish the sentence, didn’t have even a moment to remember what words were and use them as scathingly as possible. Before he could get more than a whimper out, a sound that was pathetic even to him, McGray was leaning in and deliberately sealing their mouths together.

To his credit, his very limited credit, he did at least try to resist at first. He pressed his hands hard against McGray’s chest, which was somehow warm even though so many layers of fabric covered it, and tried his best to keep his mouth still and shut. He didn’t want to melt into this thing between them again, he didn’t want to fall apart entirely and bare even more of himself. He was stronger now, and smarter, and better able to resist McGray’s wiles. All of this he told himself, quite firmly, and all of this he believed.

He didn’t believe it exceptionally hard, though. McGray noted his lack of participation, and instead of drawing back simply smiled against his lips. In the next moment he transformed his kiss into a savage bite, hard enough that his entire mouth stung, and wrapped his arms around him tightly enough that he swore he heard his ribs creak.

Maybe he wasn’t as over his uncle’s death as he had thought, maybe his mind was still one big unhealed wound. Maybe he would always be vulnerable to McGray in one way or another, no matter how hard he tried. Either way, he hesitated for only a moment more before deciding - in a fit of insanity - that surely it wouldn’t be so bad to allow himself just one more taste of joy. He greeted McGray’s bite with one of his own, equally savage, and then opened his mouth to him as easily as that.

He could’ve lied to himself that he thought his participation would end this more quickly, but even he couldn’t be that oblivious as McGray swept into his mouth with a passionate growl. Their kiss quickly transformed from a slightly uneven savagery, to a downright passionate embrace that threatened to sweep them both away. McGray fucked eagerly into his mouth with his tongue, and he allowed it with a pliancy that he had never really thought himself capable of. In answer he buried his hands tightly in McGray’s hair, tugging at the prematurely greying strands with an enthusiasm that must’ve been close to painful, and received an uncontrolled thrust up against him in return.

Already he wanted more. He knew, absolutely and completely, that it would be a bad idea… But that still didn’t exactly stop him from longing for it desperately. He greeted McGray’s thrust up with a slightly awkward roll down of his own, and decided - on the spur of the moment - that he could allow himself this too. He removed his hands from McGray’s hair, scraping them briefly down along his jawline to feel his ever present stubble, and threaded them between their bodies. He’d never unbuttoned another man’s trousers before, but he was sure the process couldn’t be that difficult.

He felt the briefest throb of McGray’s impressive cock against his palm as he pressed his hand down, thought for a dizzying second that maybe he would be able to shove aside the protests of his brain for however long it took to get McGray inside him once more…

And then he was suddenly moving again. Being thrust back across the carriage, with no dignity at all, until he was back in his old position. Except this time, with his chest heaving and stubble burn all across his lower face.

“Nine Nails, what the-?” He started, the moment he got his breath back, and then froze dead when his memory returned a bare second later. It wasn’t exactly great for his self esteem, that it only took having McGray’s tongue inserted into his mouth for him to forget every single reasonable objection. “ _Fuck_.”

McGray only smirked, either at his language or at his utter and obvious state of discombobulation. He leant back in his own chair, very deliberately extended his legs until their ankles were brushing together in the briefest and strangest caress. “I don’t think it’s ever going to be really over with us, lass. Ye better get used to that now, before ye drive yerself mad trying to forget what can’t be forgotten.”

He stared at McGray in horror, struck silent. His words held the ring of truth, and that just made the entire thing so much worse.

McGray held his eyes for a long moment, reading him in that way that he’d once found reluctantly useful and now only found completely horrifying, and then allowed his smirk to deepen. He withdrew his leg, in a deliberately courteous gesture that made him want to throw things, and diverted his gaze back out of the window without a single word more.

He glared at McGray for long enough to be sure that he wouldn’t look back at him, wouldn’t catch him in the act. And then he let out a heavy and deliberate sigh, raised his hand to his mouth and gently brushed his fingers over his lips.

He would still try to forget, but it was clear that the task would be a lot more complicated than he’d initially thought.


End file.
